Bookrata for authors
Gumroad, Payhip, Ko-fi: selling books on a general store
A general store will sell your book. It just doesn't know it's a book.
These platforms are good at what they were built for — selling a file to someone who already decided to buy it. Books are different: they're cheap, which makes flat per-sale fees bite, and readers choose them by what's inside. This page is about those two differences, and about the one question underneath all of it — who is actually selling your book to the reader.
Every figure and quotation on this page is taken from the company's own published pages or terms of service and was checked in . Where a company publishes nothing on a point, this page says so rather than guessing.
The number nobody publishes
What a general store actually costs on a $4.99 ebook
A percentage is easy to compare. A percentage plus a flat fee is not, and the flat fee is where books get hurt — because a novel costs a fraction of what a course costs, and the fifty cents doesn't care. Here is Gumroad's published rate, "10% + $0.50", worked out at real ebook prices.
| Your ebook price | Gumroad, 10% + $0.50 | Payhip free, 5% | Ko-fi free, 5% | Bookrata |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $2.99 | 26.7% $0.80 | 5% $0.15 | 5% $0.15 | 0% |
| $4.99 | 20.0% $1.00 | 5% $0.25 | 5% $0.25 | 0% |
| $9.99 | 15.0% $1.50 | 5% $0.50 | 5% $0.50 | 0% |
| $19.99 | 12.5% $2.50 | 5% $1.00 | 5% $1.00 | 0% |
Platform fees only. Payment processing is charged by Stripe or PayPal on every platform in this table, including ours, so it makes no difference to the comparison. Gumroad's pricing page does not say whether processing is included in its 10%; we have not assumed either way. Payhip and Ko-fi both state that processing is charged on top.
Gumroad's pricing was designed for a $50 course, where ten percent and fifty cents is a rounding error. Books are not $50. If you sell a $4.99 novel there, one copy in five goes to the platform.
The question underneath
Who is actually selling your book?
This is the decision you are really making, and almost nobody frames it this way. The merchant of record is the legal seller. Whoever holds that role handles the tax, carries the liability, owns the customer relationship — and, in one case here, is entitled to set your price. Everything else on this page follows from this one row.
| Platform | Merchant of record | What their own pages say |
|---|---|---|
| Bookrata | ✓ You are | You connect your own Stripe account and every purchase is paid directly into it. You set the price. Readers who opt in appear on your dashboard with their name and email. |
| Gumroad | Gumroad is | Their terms: "Gumroad is the merchant of record for the resale of your Products to the Buyers" (§6.1). You "appoint Gumroad as such Suppliers' non-exclusive reseller" (§1.1). Each product "is licensed by you through Gumroad to the relevant Buyer" (§6.7). |
| Payhip | Not published | Payhip does not state its role on the pages we read. It says "All payments are processed directly through globally trusted payment providers." We are not going to guess. |
| Ko-fi | Not published | Ko-fi does not state its role, but does say "All payments go straight into your own PayPal or Stripe account" — structurally the same as ours. |
Gumroad's terms, §6.3, in full: "Gumroad, as merchant of record for the resale of each Product, reserves the right to set the price." Put that next to §6.7 — your book is licensed through Gumroad to the reader — and the shape of the arrangement is clear. You are a supplier to a reseller. That is a legitimate way to run a store, and plenty of authors are happy with it. It is simply not the same thing as selling your own book to your own reader.
Side by side
What each one does
| Capability | Bookrata | Gumroad | Payhip | Ko-fi |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | ||||
| Cut of each sale | ✓0% |
×10% + $0.50; 30% via Discover |
~5% free, 2% Plus, 0% Pro |
~5% on shop sales, 0% on Gold |
| What you pay | $65–$150 per year |
No monthly fee |
$0, $29 or $99 per month |
$0, or $12 per month for Gold |
| Who holds what | ||||
| You are the merchant of record | ✓Your Stripe, your price |
×Gumroad is, and sets price rights |
~Not published |
~Not published |
| VAT and sales tax handled for you | ×Yours to handle — you're the merchant |
✓Collects and remits as merchant of record |
✓EU/UK VAT and US/Canadian sales tax |
~Not published |
| Because it's a book | ||||
| Content ratings on every book | ✓Six categories, five levels, applied by someone who isn't selling it |
×None |
×None |
×None |
| Readers can filter by what's inside | ✓Set your limits and filter |
×Generic product tags |
×Generic product tags |
×No |
| A reading app, and Send to Kindle | ✓EPUB, M4B audiobooks, Send to Kindle link |
×A file in a download folder |
×A file in a download folder |
×A file in a download folder |
| How sharing is discouraged | ✓Invisible per-buyer watermark — the reader never sees it |
~Not established on the pages we read |
×Visible stamp on every page of the PDF |
~Not established on the pages we read |
| Things they have and we don't | ||||
| Affiliate programme | ×No |
✓Yes |
✓Yes |
~Not established |
| Sells things that aren't books | ×Books and audiobooks only |
✓Anything digital |
✓Courses, coaching, physical goods |
✓Commissions, tips, memberships |
"Not published" means we looked and the company does not state it. It is not a criticism and it is not a no. Where we could not verify something, this page says so rather than filling the cell in.
Being straight about it
Where a general store beats us
Three of these are real, and for some authors one of them decides the whole question.
Tax
Gumroad is the merchant of record and remits VAT as the seller. Payhip says it collects and pays "EU/UK VAT and US/Canadian sales tax on your behalf so you don't have to." On Bookrata you are the merchant, which is the entire point of how we're built — and it means the tax is yours. If you are in the UK or EU and you do not want to touch VAT, that is a genuine reason to use them instead of us, and we would rather say so than have you find out in month four.
Affiliates
Gumroad and Payhip both let you recruit affiliates and pay them per sale. We have nothing comparable. If affiliate marketing is how you plan to sell, we are not the tool.
A mixed catalogue
If you sell courses, templates, workshops or coaching alongside your books, a general store handles all of it in one place. We only do books and audiobooks. Running two stores is a real cost and you should count it.
Very low volume
A percentage of almost nothing is almost nothing. Below roughly $650 a year on Gumroad, or $1,300 on a 5% plan, a fee-only platform costs less than our annual plan. If that's where you are, start there and come back when it stops being true.
Questions authors actually ask
Before you choose
Do I have to pick one?
No, and most authors shouldn't. Nothing on Bookrata is exclusive. Plenty of authors keep a general store for courses and bundles and use a Bookrata storefront for the books, because the two are good at different things.
Readers don't know Bookrata. Won't an unfamiliar checkout cost me sales?
It can, and it's a fair objection — authors say the same thing about Payhip and Gumroad in their own comment sections. We're not going to pretend we have brand recognition we haven't earned. What we can say is that checkout is a standard Stripe flow readers have used elsewhere, the book arrives immediately, and the reader keeps a DRM-free file rather than a licence.
Is Ko-fi really 0%?
On one-time tips, yes. On book sales, no. Ko-fi's own help centre says free accounts "Pay 0% on one-time tips" and that "A flat 5% service fee applies to anything else, such as shop items, memberships, monthly tips, and commissions." Ko-fi Gold removes the service fee for $12 a month.
What about Lemon Squeezy?
Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy, and its own 2026 update describes the goal as giving "Lemon Squeezy users an easy way to migrate to Stripe Managed Payments." No closure has been announced and we are not suggesting one. We have left it off the table because a product in the middle of that transition can't be fairly compared on today's terms.
Who answers a reader's refund email?
On Bookrata, you do — you're the merchant, and support requests reach the author directly. Where a platform is the merchant of record, that platform handles refunds and chargebacks. Which of those you want is a genuine preference, not a trick question.
Sourcing
Where every figure came from
- Gumroad: fees from gumroad.com/pricing — "10% + $0.50" per transaction for direct sales, "30%" for sales through Discover, and "Unlike other platforms, Gumroad doesn't charge you a monthly fee." Merchant-of-record and pricing-rights quotations from Gumroad's Terms of Service, §1.1, §6.1, §6.3, §6.7 and §10.2. The effective-rate table is our own arithmetic on their published rate.
- Payhip: fees and plans from payhip.com/pricing; "There are no feature differences between the pricing plans" from their FAQ; VAT and PDF-stamping quotations from payhip.com/features/sell-digital-downloads. Payhip does not publish its merchant-of-record status.
- Ko-fi: fee structure and the payments statement from Ko-fi's help centre article "Does Ko-fi take a fee?"; Gold price and 0% platform fee from ko-fi.com/gold.
- Lemon Squeezy: status from their own post "2026 Update: Lemon Squeezy + Stripe Managed Payments."
- All checked October 2026. Prices on general-purpose commerce platforms change more often than book-platform features do; if you are reading this well after that date, check before relying on it.